Prime Deception Read online

  Lorna was wearing a brown skirt which came to her knee and flared out, with a cream blouse tucked into it. Her hair was loose, apart from a black band which sat atop her head, perfectly framing her beautiful face. The previous night Charles had made love to her twice in his hotel suite, and now he had to use all of his self-restraint not to reach across the desk and attempt to ravish her once more.

  ‘A Tale of Two Cities, really?’ Lorna gave him a mockingly stern look as she ingested his response. ‘No, I don’t buy it. That’s the sort of book you tell people you like, to appear all learned and intellectual, but in truth, no-one likes it because it is unnatural for us to decipher the dialogue and prose because we weren’t born, like, a hundred years ago.’

  ‘I genuinely love it. It’s my favourite,’ Charles smiled bashfully, finding Lorna’s fervent response endearing.

  ‘Please! You are telling me you enjoyreading it? No way! It’s like Shakespeare – yes it is wonderful but no-one actually enjoysreading it.’ As Lorna spoke, her hands became animated, dancing through the space in front of her to help emphasise her point.

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I adore reading Dickens.’

  ‘Geek,’ Lorna teased with a smile which hinted that her mind was also preoccupied with their antics from the previous night.

  ‘So what is your favourite book?’ Charles asked, glancing away from her alluring grin, knowing he did not have the strength to resist it.

  ‘Little Women of course.’

  ‘Of course?’

  ‘Yes of course. All girls grow up loving Little Women, it’s a classic.’

  ‘Sort of like A Tale of Two Cities?’

  ‘Geek,’ Lorna teased again. This time Charles’ resolve fell away and he left his chair and traversed the distance between them in one step before taking Lorna in to his arms for a deep, passionate kiss.

  The sound of his telephone ringing rudely interrupted Charles from his blissful walk down memory lane. Feeling slightly dazed, he answered it.

  ‘I’ve just sent Laurie out for food, she will be back shortly,’ Faye informed him.

  Laurie felt humiliated with her current task, which made her feel like a glorified waitress. In the cool evening air she had traversed the streets of London in her stupidly high heels, merely to collect boutique sandwiches. She was beginning to question why Lorna had ever wanted this life when at times it felt so demeaning. The only benefit of doing the food run was the opportunity to leave the confines of the office and take in some relatively clean air. Laurie didn’t enjoy the bitter tinge she tasted on each breathe of exhaust fumes, but it was better than nothing. The urban jungle she currently resided in was making her miss the lush greenery of home more and more.

  ‘Just take it in,’ Faye ordered abruptly when Laurie returned, not even glancing up from her computer monitor to address her. Laurie resented how Lorna’s baggage had somehow become her own. Being a twin made her no less a separate person; she wasn’t going to repeat her sister’s mistakes, she was merely seeking answers to Lorna’s demise. Not that Laurie would waste her breathe explaining this to Faye, who had clearly made up her mind about her.

  ‘Food!’ Laurie declared as she entered the office, dumping the bag of sandwiches onto Charles’ desk, having none of the finesse of Elaine, who had previously unpacked an entire meal before delicately repacking it all.

  ‘Thanks,’ Charles looked up at Laurie with a strange mixture of joy and sadness which unnerved her.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Yes … well …’ Charles didn’t want to chastise Laurie but he needed to make her aware that her actions earlier that day had been wrong. ‘I know you’ve been talking to Kaiden Collins.’

  ‘So?’ Laurie retorted defensively.

  ‘About Lorna,’ Charles concluded softly.

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘Well yes, actually it is. Laurie, I know it is hard but I need you to keep a low profile whilst you are here, for both our sakes.’

  ‘I’m just tired of it all. Of being here, of having no answers.’ Laurie collapsed into the chair opposite Charles, her shoulders hunched forward in defeat.

  Charles rummaged in the bag and took out a sandwich for himself and tossed another across to Laurie.

  ‘My guy will contact me soon and we will go from there.’

  ‘And if he has nothing?’ Laurie challenged.

  ‘We will cross that bridge when we come to it.’

  ‘You are such a politician,’ Laurie scoffed.

  ‘How so?’ Charles enquired, bemused.

  ‘You have an answer for everything yet say nothing. Quite the skill.’

  ‘Hmm,’ was the only response Charles could manage, as his mouth was now consumed with his sandwich, which he was hungrily devouring.

  He noticed how Laurie picked at her own sandwich, rather than delving into it; her manner akin to how a bird would methodically pick at a worm with small delicate bites. It was how Lorna would eat, which made his heart ache with longing.

  ‘You eat like a pig,’ Laurie noted when she saw that Charles’ sandwich was already gone whilst hers was still almost whole.

  ‘And you can be most brazen for a young lady.’

  ‘God, you sound like my grandmother!’

  ‘Thanks.’

  In so many ways, Laurie was the complete contradiction to Lorna. She could be rude and contrite, she did not enjoy over indulgence and she resented authority. Yet she mirrored her deceased twin’s mannerisms. Charles wondered how the two girls behaved when they were together, and it saddened him that he would never get to know.

  ‘Do you think it strange that Lorna never told me she had a twin sister?’ Charles asked the question which had been dancing around the back of his mind ever since he had first been aware of Laurie.

  ‘Not really,’ Laurie shrugged nonchalantly, still picking at her sandwich. ‘Perhaps she was worried that you’d ask me to join you guys in the bedroom or something,’ she added teasingly.

  Charles’ eyes widened in shock and his cheeks flushed the deepest red.

  ‘I’m joking, obviously,’ Laurie said, now also feeling embarrassed. ‘Some guys are into the whole twin thing. But Lorna not mentioning me, it’s no surprise. All through school we were this duo, a double act. Even when we weren’t in the same class, people just grouped us together. We even had a nickname.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Double L. It’s lame and some of the more cruel kids would say it stood for ‘double losers’. But yeah, it wasn’t easy not having your own identity, so when we left school we drifted apart in our private lives, each forging out our own way I guess. It’s not that we were pretending we weren’t twins, we were just having a go at being individuals.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Charles agreed. He noticed how a dark cloud had suddenly settled over Laurie’s angelic looks, as she realised she would forever now be an individual.

  ‘Books!’ Charles wanted to lighten the topic; it pained him to see Laurie downcast. He longed to lure her smile out so that it could light up his office. The topic of literature was still fresh on his mind after he had reminisced about Lorna.

  ‘I love to read, when I get the opportunity. My favourite book is A Tale of Two Cities.’

  ‘Yeah, that is good,’ Laurie nodded solemnly. ‘I enjoy Dickens.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘So what would your favourite book be?’

  Laurie pondered on the question for a moment, her eyes skyward as if she were searching for the answer on the office ceiling.

  ‘Well, I guess it would have to be Little Women.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah, all girls grow up loving Little Women. It’s a classic.’

  It was so eerie to hear Laurie utter the same exact words as her deceased twin. It sent a shiver down Charles’ spine which ran all the way to his toes and spilled out past his physical being. For a moment it was as though Lorna was not gone, she was simply
hiding inside Laurie, locked away, waiting for a moment to escape and live once more.

  Chapter Eight

  Tale for sale

  Laurie read the email from Kaiden Collins with interest. It was early morning and she was in the process of trudging through all the emails which had filtered in over the previous evening, when she spotted Kaiden’s name. The title of the email was, ‘something potentially of interest’. Intrigued, Laurie immediately opened it. As she did so, a smile of relief spread across her beautiful features – she at last had a lead.

  Hi Laurie,

  When you came to see me, it got me thinking about Lorna. Nothing odd ever really happened, but just before she left here, we were on a night out and she seemed really down. She was drinking heavily which was unlike her. Anyway, she met a guy, he was a journalist, and she seemed pretty shook up about it afterwards. It could be nothing, but then it could be something, so I will text you the guy’s name and the paper he works for. Hope you find something out. Lorna was a nice girl, I miss her.

  Kaiden

  It wasn’t difficult to theorise why Lorna would have been upset about meeting a journalist. Kaiden was right when he noted that it was out of character for Lorna to drink considerable amounts of alcohol. The twins had both always been paradigms of virtue growing up, neither had even tried smoking. Sex and drinking were not something either girl entered into lightly. It was only when Lorna was separated from her twin, who had kept her morality centred, that she started to slip. Lonely, she sought comfort from the bottom of a glass. Lorna reasoned that having slept with a married man, anything else she did would be in the minor leagues. She had already tainted herself beyond reproach.

  It saddened Laurie to imagine her sister like that; drunk and out of control. Worse than the sadness was the feeling of guilt. Even Kaiden, a colleague, had sensed that something was wrong. How could Laurie have missed the signs? How could she not have known that her twin was in pain?

  A second email in her inbox caught her eye. It was sent from Arthur Dolan with the subject, ‘This is crazy’.

  Sighing, Laurie went to permanently delete the message without even opening it but then decided to read it, more out of interest than anything else.

  Laurie, it’s me. Again. All you do is ignore me. Your mum told me where you are. What you are doing is crazy. I’m worried about you. You need to come home.

  Frowning, Laurie swiftly deleted the message. She didn’t like Arthur’s tone. He was trying to control her, telling her what to do. She didn’t need to come home, she needed to find out the truth about Lorna, once and for all. Her phone buzzed and she grinded her teeth, certain that the incoming text message would be from Arthur.

  Checking her phone, she saw that the message was actually from Kaiden, containing contact details about the reporter as promised. He worked for The Shadow. It wasn’t a paper that Laurie was personally familiar with but she was aware of its reputation. She felt hesitant about contacting the journalist there, as a voice deep within the back of her mind warned that if she opened up this can of worms, there would be no going back and she might be unable to handle the truth. She’d accepted that Lorna was going to sell her story, she’d just never stopped to think about why she would so that; what would motivate her to sell intimate details of her life to the mass media? It pained Laurie to consider that perhaps she wasn’t as in tune with her twin as she’d always believed. This journalist might have answers, and Laurie needed them no matter how hard it might be to hear.

  John Quinn finished typing up a story that was so mundane he struggled to stay awake as he wrote it. His insomnia had returned with a vengeance for the past couple of months and it showed. He was becoming sluggish and irritable. Even Maria, his one ally at the paper, had started to give him a wide berth. He needed rest but his mind continually whirred with a ferocious anger. He needed a big story; he needed to make a name for himself. He had been so close, so very close. He had seen the holy grail of stories, almost been able to reach out and touch it, but then, in an instant it was gone, and his quest had to begin all over again and he was too old and too tired for the constant searching.

  He almost didn’t hear his telephone ringing through his fog of fatigue. Shaking his head in an attempt to rouse himself he reluctantly answered.

  ‘Quinn.’

  ‘Hi, is that John Quinn?’ came a fragile female voice, almost obscured by the sound of traffic around her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hi … um, look. I know that this is kind of strange,’ wind whipped past the mouth piece, completing cutting out the young woman who took the opportunity to pause and compose herself.

  ‘My name is Laurie Thomas. I believe that you knew my twin sister, Lorna. Can we talk?’

  John instantly recognised the name. How could he forget it? The feeling of excitement and possibility began to awaken within him; feelings which he had believed had become extinct.

  ‘Yes, we can talk, certainly.’ John frantically reached for a pen and paper, hardly believing his luck to have received such an opportune phone call. ‘Can you meet me today, say for lunch?’

  ‘No.’ Laurie said abruptly. Then, more softly, ‘I’m working. I can meet tomorrow. But that is a Saturday.’

  ‘Saturdays are fine.’ For John and his colleagues, the attachment the rest of the world gave to days of the week was obsolete. Every day was potentially a working day; weekends did not exist, except for those who did not have the drive to progress.

  ‘There is a café called The 10 Stop, can we meet there?’

  ‘The 10 Stop, that’s near the Houses of Parliament?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you want to meet there? Wouldn’t somewhere more central be better?’

  ‘No. It’s the only place I know.’

  ‘Right, okay. How come …’ John wanted to question Laurie further but she suddenly interrupted him.

  ‘I have to go. I’ll be at The 10 Stop for half twelve tomorrow. You’ll recognise me.’ And then the line went dead. Bemused, John just stared at the telephone receiver for a few moments, hardly daring to believe what was unfolding before him. He was being given a second chance to capture the greatest story of his career and he was determined not to let it fall from his grasp again. He quickly scribbled a note and left it prominently on his desk, relaying to anyone interested that he would be spending the remainder of the day working from home, when in reality he was going back to his cramped apartment to sleep, for tomorrow was going to be a big day for him and he needed his rest.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’ Faye enquired as Laurie returned to her desk, her cheeks flush from her brief excursion outside.

  ‘Oh yes, thank you, much better. I just suddenly felt so very sick.’

  ‘As long as you are feeling okay now,’ Faye managed to smile, aware that it would undoubtedly appear false.

  Laurie felt quietly reflective as she sat her desk, carrying out the menial tasks assigned to her. She kept trying to unpick Lorna’s motives for associating with a journalist from a seedy tabloid newspaper, but she kept failing to reach a logical conclusion. She felt as though she was getting closer to the truth but her own fears were beginning to hold her back. Laurie was not ready to deal with the reality that perhaps she had not known her own twin sister at all.

  Faye was not the most astute of women but she could not fail to notice how Laurie barely breathed a word to her that day, instead keeping her dainty head bent down to her keyboard, as if hoping it would swallow her whole and release her from the terrible world she resided in. Faye did not intend to be resentful towards her young intern, and was aware that she was transferring her tarnished opinion of Lorna onto Laurie which was not fair.

  If Laurie was genuinely ill, which would explain her muted demeanour, then Faye accepted that the young girl should go home and rest. She was about to suggest as much when her telephone rang.

  ‘Good afternoon Deputy Prime Minister,’ she greeted Charles politely, having recognised the extension nu
mber from his office.

  ‘Can you send Laurie in, I’ve some work for her,’ he instructed bluntly.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Faye managed to smile but behind her grin she was seething. Her resentful feelings towards the Thomas twins bubbled to the surface once more. Their angelic looks had gained them access to the Deputy Prime Minister and it made Faye feel sick with rage. It was a wicked world to live in where the beautiful succeeded on aesthetics alone. And whilst Laurie appeared quiet and demure, history was clearly repeating itself.

  ‘He wants to see you,’ she instructed her young intern rudely, no longer caring for any ailment she may be suffering from. Laurie sighed and hauled herself up from her chair as though her limbs were made from lead. If an affair was being carried out, she was a less than willing party to it.

  Faye watched her leave, grinding her teeth in fury. She worked tirelessly in an attempt to get into the Deputy Prime Minister’s good graces and to no avail. He cared only for the young and the pretty, or so it seemed. But Faye learnt long ago, back on the playground, that she would not be able to rely on her looks as other did. Women like her would have to work hard to forge their way in life, and then enjoy watching the prettier exterior of those around them fade away, taking joy in their realisation that without their beauty, they had nothing. Faye may not have been beautiful but at least she was a woman of substance; she consoled herself with this fact each time she felt overlooked rather than looked over.

  ‘Laurie, hey.’ Charles felt his mood instantly lift as the delicate blonde entered his office.

  ‘Hi.’ Laurie barely lifted her gaze from the floor to look at him. She walked across to his desk and slumped her tiny frame down on to the chair opposite him.

  ‘Shit, I forgot my notepad,’ she said suddenly, looking mildly agitated. ‘Faye gets pissed off if I don’t go back to her with some fictional notes about stuff to do.’ Laurie went to leave but Charles raised his hand in a gesture to stop her.